Of course, he’d kept his arm firmly around her waist even though they’d wedged into the seat at the rear of the boat some time ago. So maybe she had better skills at getting a man salivating after her than he’d credited.
“So, first time on a boat. First time to the Caribbean too?” he asked. Might as well get all the virgin talk out at once.
She nodded. “First time to do anything even remotely like this. Including the part where I’m sitting here with a hot guy.”
Well. That was a nice compliment, which he took as such since she didn’t have a flirty bone in her body, and his throat caught in unexpected pleasure. “We don’t bite. Unless you ask.”
Lame. What was wrong with him? Except she laughed like she’d never heard that one before, and he realized she probably didn’t often hear even the most common of pickup lines for whatever reason. Which was a shame—she should have guys telling her she was pretty and stumbling over pathetic attempts to get into her panties.
The lack of that in her life also meant she had no filter against pickup lines.
That was not good information to be swirling around in his brain.
“Curious about something,” he croaked and cleared the hitch of awareness from his voice as best he could. Probably it was a lost cause. “Why did you sign up for the Galloway Games if this is not the kind of thing you normally do?”
“Oh, Thora made me,” she readily volunteered. “I make one little comment about how my photographs are boring and I need to figure out how to take better ones. Bam. I’m doing this thing with her. Apparently, I spend too much time holed up away from people in my darkroom and I need to have experiences. Find some passion.”
As in… passion? Like the kind that happened between a guy and a girl?
God, she was going to kill him.
Complete and total agenda change.
“Hold the phone. One mind-boggling revelation at a time. You’re a photographer?”
That shouldn’t be important, but his gut was screaming at him that it was. Somehow cameras and sex had gotten all wound up together, and if there was anything that Fitz thrived on, it was making sense of raw data. Especially if it got him closer to unraveling the mystery of this woman who had thoroughly captured his attention. And the answer included sex.
She nodded. “Freelance. But mostly of barns and forests. I’d like to move into different subjects. Live action stuff. This is supposed to be an adventure designed to get me out of a rut.”
Jack and Thora—now in the running for the “couple most likely to interrupt at the worst possible time” award—clambered onto the boat chattering about the first clue, and it was a toss-up whether Fitz was going to throttle his buddy or kiss him on the mouth.
If Lilah wanted a passionate adventure of epic proportions, Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Theodore Fitzhugh was precisely the man for that job.
Boats weren’t Lilah’s first choice of transportation. As Jack revved the engine and glided away from the dock, she gripped the slick waterproof material covering the bench and tried not to topple over against Fitz’s chest. She’d accidentally felt him up pretty good earlier, and concrete was softer than the man’s torso. It would definitely not cushion the blow if she lost her balance. Again.
At least he’d moved his arm. The heat of it around her waist had almost caused her to break out in a sweat.
The wind picked up, riffling her hair and blowing it across her eyelashes until she pried her fingers from the cushion and swept it away. Which made her stiff-backed perch on this bench seat precarious again.
“You’re allowed to relax,” Fitz said, and she glanced at him lounging back against the seat as if he was having the time of his life. He’d slipped dark-lensed sunglasses over his gorgeous eyes, which was a tragedy of the highest order. Coupled with the overnight growth of stubble on his jaw, he was by far the most devastating man she’d ever met.
And dangerous. He just had to breathe on her and all sorts of alarm bells and whistles went off in her head. So not safe. But her fingers itched to capture him forever in the lens of her mind. Photographs were worth a thousand words, and she might never get tired of the story called Fitz.
“Easy for you to say. You’ve done this before.” Curiously, she glanced at him. “Navy? Were you a SEAL like Jack?”
“Still am,” he said with an eyebrow waggle. “I don’t bail when we haven’t yet eliminated all the baddies out there in the world.”
Fascinating. She’d seen a couple of the movies they’d made about SEALs, because hello Bradley Cooper and Mark Wahlberg—she’d watch either one of them read the phone book. But the side benefit was that she had a good appreciation for the realities of his job. What he did was legendary. Heroic. And it put Fitz ten times more out of her league.